Asus Transformer Book T200 Review and Ratings

Editors’ Rating:

Our Verdict:
The 11.6-inch sibling of Asus' popular 10.1-inch Transformer Book T100 offers a tempting 2-in-1 experience including a full keyboard dock with extra ports, a user-upgradable storage bay, and eight-hour battery life for $499. Read More…

What We Liked…

Works great as a notebook or tablet

Good keyboard and touch pad

User-upgradable storage

What We Didn’t…

Feels inexpensive

Low screen resolution

Clunky display release action

Asus Transformer Book T200 Review

Table of Contents

Introduction, Design & Features

Just over a year ago, Asus rocked our world—or at least the convertible or hybrid laptop/tablet world—with the $399 Transformer Book T100, a 10.1-inch detachable-screen machine that raised the bar for affordable 2-in-1 systems, copped Computer Shopper's Product of the Year award, and killed off Microsoft's misbegotten Windows RT.

How can Asus top that? By getting bigger. At 11.6 inches and $499, the Transformer Book T200 reviewed here is the middle child in a three-part lineup of detachables, beginning with the T100 and ending with the substantially more expensive 13.3-inch T300LA. All are laptops whose touch screens come off with the push of a latch for use as tablets, docking and undocking with no reboot or system shutdown needed.

In the case of the T200, you get more than a larger, easier-on-the-eyes screen compared to the T100. Besides a well-balanced tablet, you get a keyboard that adds more than just keys, offering several ports and an honest-to-goodness drive bay for bolstering the 64GB of flash storage with a 2.5-inch notebook hard drive or SSD (up to 1TB).

We found the Transformer Book T200 was comfortable to hold compared to the tablet portions of other 2-in-1 devices we've reviewed like the Toshiba Satellite Click 2. Three of its sides share the same contoured edge, while the bottom is smooth but flatter to fit into the dock. With the two pieces joined, the T200 is somewhat bulky compared to a pure tablet or an ultrabook—1 inch thick and 3.6 pounds—but its tablet half is competitive at 0.4 inch thick and 1.7 pounds, especially considering that most full-sized tablets are smaller than 11.6 inches diagonally.

Design

The T200's rank-and-file exterior is reminiscent of other budget-oriented devices; it really has nothing that makes it visually stand out from the crowd. This 2-in-1 pulls off the notebook look well when the keyboard dock is attached. The tablet half is slightly thicker than the lid of a normal notebook this size, but not enough so to give away its status as a hybrid device to the untrained eye. We like how the keyboard is slightly angled toward the user.

The keyboard dock and screen have impressive strength and did a good job of resisting our attempts to induce flex. Different plastics are used in the T200's construction, the most durable of which makes up the laptop's lid or back of the tablet. This plastic has Asus' trademark textured circular pattern. The bottom of the keyboard dock has a different texture but feels just as sturdy. The silver plastic surrounding the keyboard itself feels thinner and less durable, but then it isn't exposed to the same amount of wear and tear as the back of the tablet.

The screen bezel is almost awkwardly thick; it looks like a 12.5-inch or perhaps even 13.3-inch display would have fit. Nonetheless, the thick bezel allows room to wrap your fingers around the tablet without touching the display. The display has a plastic edge which should help protect against the unintentional bumps that are bound to happen given the tablet's portability factor.

You disengage the tablet from the keyboard base by pressing a rectangular button on the display hinge. It takes slightly more effort to depress the button than anticipated, and it makes a rather cheap click when it finally gives in. The tablet can then be lifted free with, again, slightly more than the expected effort; a little side-to-side wiggling is required too.

Returning the tablet to the dock requires minimal guidance but firm pressure to fully click in; we made the mistake of not fully engaging it once. When performing touch-screen operations in laptop mode, the screen can wobble a bit more than the lid of a traditional notebook, but not enough to make us worry.

Features

In laptop mode, the Transformer Book T200 functions almost exactly like a regular notebook except for the fact that its display doesn't tilt back far enough for our liking—only about 30 degrees past vertical (we like to see at least 45 degrees). The T200 is surprisingly well-balanced in notebook mode, considering the lid represents about half the device's total weight. We doubt an unknowing user would realize he was working with a 2-in-1 instead of a conventional laptop.

The chiclet-style keyboard is almost full-sized and fully functional, with all of the keys we'd see on a regular Windows keyboard. Backlighting, alas, is unavailable. The keys provide acceptable feedback and ample travel but suffer from a plasticky feel; it feels as if they should be more securely anchored. This feeling is exacerbated by the mild rattle produced by each keypress which happens even with light effort. We think the keyboard could use some refinement but found no functional issues; we typed on it for hours without fatigue.

The integrated touch pad is sized just right for an 11.6-inch display. Its smooth surface makes for accurate tracking. The pad certainly feels solid enough; however, we wish the required click pressure was more consistent—it takes more pressure to perform a click at the top of the pad than at the bottom. Additionally, the clicks are too loud and sound less solid than we hoped. Again, however, like the keyboard, the touch pad is functionally sound and satisfactory at this price point.

The Asus matches most ultrabooks in connectivity when the extra ports added by the keyboard dock are taken into account. On the left side of the tablet itself are a Micro SD card reader, Micro USB and Micro HDMI ports, a headphone/microphone jack, and an AC power jack. You'll have to purchase dongles to use the micro ports with standard devices as none are included. Three buttons are located along the top left corner for power, volume, and the Windows button. These buttons are resistant enough to prevent most accidental presses.

The bottom of the tablet has the connection interface for the keyboard dock. The only other physical features on the tablet itself are the integrated camera at the top and the faintly visible speaker holes residing in the middle of the left and right edges. The T200 runs silently because it doesn't need a cooling fan.

As mentioned, the keyboard dock is more than just a keyboard: it adds full-sized Ethernet and USB 3.0 ports on its left side and a USB 2.0 port on its right. Perhaps the most unique feature of the keyboard dock is its user-upgradable storage bay. You remove one screw and push toward the hinge to pop off the access panel and reveal a bay that accepts standard 2.5-inch, 9.5mm height SATA drives including both hard drives and SSDs.

Naturally, this storage device will only be accessible when the tablet is docked, but it's a great option. This feature means you're not limited to the amount of free space the Transformer Book comes with, which in our review unit's case was only about half of the supplied 64GB of storage.

The display's 10-point touch functionality is smooth and accurate. The display itself is an IPS (in-plane switching) panel, the kind we expect to see on a tablet since it provides for wide viewing angles. Brightness is good for indoor and outdoor use alike, though we noticed a good amount of reflection off the glossy display surface in well-lit areas. Both contrast and color are satisfactory, considerably better than budget notebooks with TN (twisted nematic) panels.

The 1,366x768 resolution is limiting but acceptable on an 11.6-inch display. At this price, we'd prefer a 1,920x1,080 screen considering that a number of rival tablets, especially Android versions, offer one. Admittedly, though, those devices typically don't include keyboards.

The two stereo speakers are on the extreme left and right edges of the tablet, which is unfortunately where you grip the slate in landscape mode. This can muffle the sound, though we found holding the tablet with just our fingertips solved the problem. The speakers have fair sound quality and get loud enough for two people to watch a movie in a quiet environment. The hint of bass is enough to give the speakers a fuller sound than we were expecting given their size and placement.

Unlike the less expensive T100, the Transformer Book T200 has both front- and rear-facing cameras. Neither is of objectively good quality—neither better nor worse than we've seen on competing devices—but both are functional provided you don't intend to shoot a blockbuster movie. The 5-megapixel rear camera is of better quality; it can take reasonable close-ups of text and other objects for later review and smooth video with relatively accurate color. The 2-megapixel front camera exhibited grainy quality even in well-lit conditions but has enough resolution to make out detail in faces and background objects.